Heat is a growing problem across the world. Heat waves can cause workers to get sick while also causing the equipment and technology they use to break down. As worker deaths from heat-related illness have continued to increase, OSHA has started a major initiative to protect people from unsafe work environments caused by high heat.
Amid this spike in heat-related problems, organizations are using "Room Alert" technology from a Warren-based company, AVTECH Software. to monitor their environments to ensure safe working conditions.
The company's monitoring software provides the real-time temperature and actual airflow from a HVAC vent, allowing facility managers to monitor, log and alert when the temperature goes up, according to AVTECH President & COO Richard Grundy.
“Something as simple as reduced airflow velocity could indicate that a filter change is needed or that a system is under-performing and requires maintenance, well before it fails and incurs significantly more expensive to repair,” he said. “Room Alert provides visibility that facilities managers have not had before, allowing them to make better decisions and save their organization significant time and money on wasted energy and unnecessary repairs.”
Grundy said that Room Alert, which proactively monitors environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, flood, power, smoke, and more, started off as an ‘internet of things’ initiative in the early days of the web. Now, it’s being used in 187 countries, by a variety of organizations ranging from thousands of small businesses to giants like Boeing and Microsoft as well as several government agencies and the United Nations. It's even being used in space.
“Room Alert was born directly from a customer needing to be alerted when power was lost or the air conditioning failed," Grundy told RI Inno.
Grundy said their Room Alert hardware monitors quickly grew to be the most popular products and have been the company's primary focus over the past two decades.
“We have now expanded well outside of our IT and data center roots, with Room Alert products used for building and facility monitoring, safety and compliance applications, and even as a tool to measure sustainability efforts,” he said. “Room Alert was an Internet of Things product before IoT was even a popular buzzword. Sensor technology has evolved from analog to digital and the types of sensors that can be monitored have increased exponentially. “
Grundy said AVTECH was originally founded in Southern California, then moved to Newport RI in the early 90s as a strategic move to be closer to customers in Europe while remaining close to business and media hubs in Boston and New York. AVTECH moved into a permanent home at Cutler Mill in Warren, RI in 2008.
“While Room Alert certainly has a place in new construction, we are finding many forward thinking owners of older buildings using Room Alert to retrofit building intelligence and environment monitoring into older spaces to get the data and visibility of a new building at a fraction of the cost,” he said.
